Göring told the white-faced field marshal that the Führer in-
sisted he resign.
Göring must already have been certain that Fritsch was out
of the running. He hoped that Fritsch’s opposition to Hitler’s
planned military adventures ruled Fritsch out. “What would
your prime minister have done,” he rhetorically asked Sir Nevile
Henderson a few days later, “if the chief of the imperial general
staff [the British equivalent to Fritsch] had come to him and not
only demanded the resignation of the war minister but also ex-
pressed dissatisfaction with the government’s foreign policy and
other measures?”
Göring immediately began extensive canvassing to be
awarded the War Ministry. He sent over Bodenschatz to brief
Wiedemann; he briefed von Below himself. But Hitler hesitated
to give him the supreme command. His own solution, which he
would disclose to Blomberg a few days later, was to become su-
preme commander himself, making use of Blomberg’s staff, the
Wehrmachtsamt, for the time being.
Unaware that Hitler had decided to award himself the
prize, Göring took furtive steps to disqualify the only other
runner, General von Fritsch. He recalled that the general had
apparently once been accused of a peccadillo and sent for the
police file to refresh his memory. Two years earlier a young con-
victed blackmailer, one Otto Schmidt, had claimed that in No-
vember he had witnessed a male prostitute, one Sepp
Weingärtner, engaged in a homosexual act with a man who
identified himself as “General Fritsch”; Schmidt had extorted
twenty-five hundred marks from the man afterward. Among
other homosexual victims Schmidt had named were Walter
Funk and other leading Nazis. The authorities had notified Hit-
ler and Göring. Hitler had ordered the investigations discontin-
ued, because the Rhineland crisis was brewing. But evidently the